## Facts

- Defendants operated “the Lodge,” a restaurant and bar that had provided live and jukebox music for more than 30 years.
- The Lodge bordered a rural residential subdivision (Paradise Estates) with about 33 homes built around 1970.
- Residents living roughly 600–800 feet away complained that, especially on weekend nights, loud music and related noise (including hand clapping, foot stomping, and vibrations) were audible inside their homes.
- Residents testified the noise interfered with sleep and use and enjoyment of their property and was not materially reduced by closing doors and windows.
- Sheriff’s officers corroborated that music and related noise from the Lodge could be heard within nearby residences.
- The district attorney filed a civil action seeking injunctive relief to abate the alleged nuisance.
- The trial court found a public nuisance and permanently enjoined defendants from permitting music and related noise to be audible anywhere beyond the Lodge’s property boundaries.

## Issues

1. Whether the People, through the district attorney, had standing to sue to abate the alleged noise condition as a public nuisance.
2. Whether substantial evidence supported the finding that the Lodge’s operation constituted a public nuisance rather than a purely private nuisance.
3. Whether an injunction prohibiting any music or related noise audible beyond defendants’ property boundaries was impermissibly vague or overbroad.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal held the People had standing because the alleged interference affected a neighborhood or a considerable number of persons.
- The Court of Appeal held substantial evidence supported the trial court’s finding of a public nuisance based on ongoing, sleep-disrupting noise impacting multiple households.
- The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment to the extent it imposed a “no audibility beyond the property line” injunction and remanded for entry of a narrower injunction tailored to abate only nuisance-level noise.

## Legal Principles

- A public nuisance is an interference that affects an entire community or neighborhood, or a considerable number of persons, permitting public enforcement through the People.
- Noise may constitute a nuisance when it is injurious to health or unreasonably obstructs the free use of property and interferes with comfortable enjoyment of life or property.
- Injunctive relief to abate a nuisance must be narrowly drawn; a court may not prohibit lawful conduct more than reasonably necessary to eliminate the nuisance.
- An injunction that bans any sound merely “audible” beyond property boundaries is overbroad because it restrains non-nuisance, reasonable sound as well as excessive noise.

## Conclusion

The court upheld public enforcement and the nuisance finding based on substantial evidence of ongoing, neighborhood-wide sleep-disrupting noise, but required modification of the injunction because a blanket prohibition on any audible sound beyond the property line exceeded what was necessary to abate the nuisance.


People v. Mason, 177 Cal. Rptr. 284 (Cal. Ct. App. 1981)